


Makes the heart beat wake all night

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternative Universe - Cyberpunk, Canon-compliant slurs, Canon-compliant violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny is the night cashier in a noodle bar. Dally rides in a cyber-rodeo. Cyberpunk AU.</p><p>Canon-typical swearing and violence.</p><p>Title from Allen Ginsberg. The age difference between them is probably two-three years, though I aged them up from the books.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Makes the heart beat wake all night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marycontraire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/gifts).



“Hey,” the man says to him. As openings go, it’s not that great, but it’s not “Hey, greaser,” or “Hey, ‘spic,” or “Hey, queer,” so Johnny’ll take it.

“What’d you like?”

The man shrugs. He’s not a big guy, blond hair cut short the way all the rodeo-boys have, ever since one got his hair tangled in the gears of the electric bronc he was riding and got his head tore clean off on live TV. “Whatever’s good. I ain’t too picky.”

Johnny puts in an order for pho with pork balls, tea.

“Sure,” the man says, and swipes his finger across the bioscan to pay. He’s got one of the prepay credits, no name needed, so all that pops up on the screen is his balance.

“What name would you like me to call when it’s ready?” Johnny asks, ‘cause in this part of town at this time of night, you can get your teeth knocked in for just asking someone’s name outright. No matter what his daddy says, Johnny does learn.

“Dally,” the man says. “Call me Dally.”

 

 

 

 

Dally lingers over his noodles, slurping carefully, napkin tucked in his collar. Unlike the other customers, who seem embarrassed to be eating alone, Dally doesn’t take out a tablet or tap on his comm or do anything but eat and consider the empty seat of the booth across from him.

It’s a slow night. The rodeo doesn’t open on Mondays, so Dally must have just been at practice, has a smear of grease on the sleeve of his white T-shirt. Johnny wipes off the empty tables, strains the noodles so they don’t get bloated with broth, even if that’s how he likes them, slices fresh limes and sprouts new beans, and does much of the prep work for the guys on the next shift.

Dally sits and sips his tea.

Johnny brews a new pot, strong and dark as mushroom soup, goes to refill Dally’s cup.

Dally gives him the cup without comment, accepts it back with a shrug of thanks.

“Is better,” he says, after a sip. “Than the weak stuff you served before.”

“Thought I was the only one who liked it this way,” Johnny says.

“Naw, kid,” Dally says. He offers Johnny a cigarette, though frowns over the way Johnny coughs on the first draw. “You even old enough to be smoking?”

Johnny takes another long inhale, cups his hand around the cigarette in case Dally decides to snatch it back. “Old enough to be working, yeah.”

“Guess so,” Dally says.

 

 

 

 

Dally comes back the next night, when there’s a rush, the after-rodeo crowd abuzz, drunk on the cheap stuff they sell at the stadium, the thrill of one of the riders getting his arm yanked loose, thrown around on the bronc like a ragdoll.

Johnny’d seen it, had the TV on mute so he could listen to his book. Working as he did doesn’t leave much time for print, and Johnny doesn’t like the way words always seem to be a different order in his brain than they are on the page.

He turned the sound on the TV once he saw the rider. It wasn’t Dally - was some other guy, red-headed and freckled. They’d had to haul him out on a stretcher, come back for the man’s arm.

Still, Johnny lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding when Dally walks in. He orders the same meal - the “don’t much care so long as it’s hot, and it all tastes the same, anyhow” special - sits in the same booth. Alone, again.

A few people in the crowd go up to Dally, punch him on the arm, offer him a smoke. A girl sidles up, leans over, the short red denim of her skirt hiking up her thighs.

Johnny takes orders, buses tables, gets smacked in the ass by one drunken asshole who might think he’s a girl or a whore or possibly both. Johnny doesn’t make the guy’s change correctly, pockets the difference, though the guy and his buddies don’t catch on.

Another group isn’t as subtle. They’re stim’d up, not just drunk, pupils blown in a way that says pills or subdermal implants. They have the look of socs, money leaking from their expensive mimetic jackets, toned in bright blues and yellows to match whatever music they have wired to their brains.

They shout their order at him, even though he can hear just fine, speak loud and slow like they don’t expect him to know the language. One, a girl with hair dyed bright cherry red, smiles at him in a way he’s seen people smile at kids or animals. The blond guy next to her scowls, makes a point of counting his change twice, of flashing the handle of a plasma knife when he goes to put his card back in his pocket. Guys like that don’t use their real ident cards at places like this.

They order enough that Johnny has to cart it over to them, steaming bowls of soup, hot dumplings, six cups of ginger tea.

It’s slow-going in this crowd, and no matter how careful he is, some spills. He wipes it quickly with the dishtowel he has stuck in the pocket of his apron, though one of the guys at the table sees and catches his wrist.

Johnny feels the familiar sensation of bone against bone, knows he’ll have a bruise like a bracelet tomorrow.

“Stop fucking touching our food, you fucking greaser,” the guy says, voice loud so that his friends can hear.

The girl with the red hair goes for her jacket like she might leave. “Dammit, Bob. Can’t you just let the kid give us our food.”

“Yeah, Bob,” comes a low, cold voice from behind Johnny. “Let the kid give you your food.”

Johnny doesn’t have to turn to know it’s Dally.

Bob’s hold on Johnny’s wrist tightens, just for an instant, then releases.

Johnny cradles his wrist with his other hand, wills himself not to shake.

“Don’t want trouble,” Bob says.

“Don’t look that way from my perspective,” Dally says.

“Well, no one asked you, you fucking greaser cowboy punk,” Bob says.

Dally doesn’t respond, but he does shove Johnny out of the way, throws over a few of the rickety tables.

Johnny hides, hopes foolishly that the food won’t get tossed in the process, ‘cause he’ll have to pay for it, and the broken dishes.

He hears Bob swear, the sound of a fist meeting someone’s face, the girls shrieking and batting ineffectually, then possibly running out the door. He can see most of the other customers leaving - probably have outstanding warrants, enough to make problems if the cops show - and there go his tips.

A few stay, chant, “Fight, fight, fight,” like this is the stadium.

And then there’s the sound of a plasma knife snicking on.

Johnny can see the edge of its glow from where he’s crouched, blue, probably to match Bob’s hideous jacket.

“Fancy,” he hears Dally say. Dally’s speech is just as it was - steady, cold - and then there’s the sound of glass breaking, a bottle probably. “Don’t need no toys to cut you up real good, _Bob_.”

Johnny peers up enough to see Bob lunge with the knife, to see Dally take a slice to the arm, but it’s a shallow cut, and then Dally buries the broken bottle in Bob’s thigh.

Bob wails like an stuck animal.

“Get him to the hospital,” Dally says. “Or, just get him the fuck out of here.”

Everyone clears out, leaving a wreckage of chairs and tables Johnny’ll have to stay late to set right.

“C’mon, kid,” Dally says. “Let’s get you out too.”

“I have to -” Johnny says.

Dally spits. He’s bleeding a little, from the mouth, and more from where the soc cut him. “Leave it. Serves your boss right for not giving you protection, neighborhood like this.”

Johnny’s hands are still shaking. He lights one of his cigarettes, inhales, exhales. “Let me get my stuff.”

 

 

 

 

Dally walks him to his folks’ place. “Those assholes might come back,” Dally says, at Johnny’s surprised look. “Might want to lay low for a little while.”

“Yeah,” Johnny says.

Dally grips his arm where he got sliced. The blood flow is slower. Plasma knives are mostly for show in a fight, something flashy to impress the other punks, since they cauterize as they cut. Still, they could do some damage if used right. Johnny’d nicked one from a pawn shop up the street, carries it in the inside pocket of his coat.

Johnny’s folks are in fine form when they get to his place, his old man drunk and yelling at his mom, whose screams can be heard clear across the street. Nights like this, Johnny generally spends on a cot in the back of the noodle shop or at Ponyboy’s place.

“C’mon,” Dally says. “You can crash at mine if you don’t mind a mess.”

“Sure,” Johnny says. “All right.”

Dally’s place isn’t any messier than Johnny’s. It’s an efficiency, one room and a curtained off chem-toilet, a battered couch on one end of the room, a battered bed on the other.

Dally heats up some water on a hot plate, lets Johnny wash out the cut, secure it with butterfly bandages. He doesn’t even wince when Johnny floods the cut with peroxide, bubbles forming on Dally’s skin.

“Been doing this long enough,” Dally says, has grown insensitive to brawling or riding or just being, Johnny’s not sure which.

“Me too,” Johnny says, after a minute.

Dally grabs the spare pillow off his bed, throws it and an old blanket at Johnny.

“Get some sleep, kid,” he growls, before passing out face down.

Johnny wakes not long after. His wrist throbs, is already purpling. He rummages through the clutter around Dally’s sink, the old-fashioned straight razor, a spare pack of smokes, before coming up with a bottle of white pills simply marked ‘For Pain,’ in neat block writing. The pills are huge, and Johnny must make noise chopping one in half, because Dally stirs in his bed.

“Get me one of those too,” Dally mumbles. “My back.”

Johnny brings a pill, a tepid glass of water from the rattling sink, sits on the bed beside Dally. The bed sags a little, even under Johnny’s weight, creaks.

Dally accepts the pill, swallows it with a glug of water, some missing his mouth and streaming down his cheek.

“I could rub your back,” Johnny says, somehow brave in the thin light streaming in from the street. “If you want.”

“I want-” Dally begins, and then shakes his head. “It don’t matter. My back’s shot to shit, just a matter of time before I stop riding, get banged up like my old man.”

“He a rider too?” Johnny asks.

“Among other things,” Dally says.

“I could - I could stay,” Johnny says, looking across Dally, through the thin curtains at the neon lights flashing at the stadium a few blocks away. “Heat might help your back.”

“Don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Dally says, after a minute. He looks younger, face relaxed from sleep or from the pill, maybe, kicking in fast.

“I’m saying yes,” Johnny says, and lies down beside Dally. Dally smells like dark tea, like engine grease, like sweat. He’s warm, if tense, and Johnny leans his head on Dally’s shoulder.

“Jesus, kid, you ain’t even old enough to know what ‘yes’ means.”

“Old enough,” Johnny says. “Turned 18 a month ago. Not a kid.”

“Pouting like a kid really proves your point,” Dally says. “Kid.”

“I can go,” Johnny says, unsure if he means back to the busted-up couch or back to his house or if Dally even cares either way.

Dally sighs, lights a cigarette, ashes it into the glass sitting on his bed-table. “Didn’t say that.” He sucks a long draw, exhales over Johnny’s head. “Wait till the morning. If I’m still looking like something you want, once them drugs have worn off, then we’ll see.”

“OK,” Johnny says, and settles next to Dally, feels the rise and fall of his chest. Johnny closes his eyes, hums a little. “We’ll see.”


End file.
